


If I Am Ever A Queen

by PlayingTheGameOfThrones



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Mutual Pining, Post canon, Secret Affair, Some eventual smut, Unhappy Arranged Marriage, bran is kind of a villain, lord royce is a moron, mostly angst, sansa and tyrion are lovesick puppies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-03-13 14:31:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18942892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlayingTheGameOfThrones/pseuds/PlayingTheGameOfThrones
Summary: Houses Umber and Karstark declare independence from Stark rule. Sansa seeks her brother Bran’s advice, and finds herself face to face with her former husband once more.





	1. Chapter 1

Queen Sansa Stark sat at her vanity in her bedchamber, watching her own reflection as one of her many ladies brushed out her long auburn hair.

Sansa had been Queen in the North for nearly five years now, and she found herself searching for any sign of age in her face. _Why should I have aged in that time?_ She chided herself, imperceptibly shaking her head as her handmaiden set down the silver-backed brush and reached for Sansa’s crown. _I am only four and twenty._

 _And still unmarried_ , a voice inside her whispered.

With her siblings gone or unable to have children, the continuation of the Stark line fell to her. _There must always be a Stark in Winterfell_. Winterfell had stood for thousands of years, and would stand for thousands of years after she herself was long buried in the crypts beneath it. If her parents’ wishes were to be fulfilled, she would need to produce heirs, and soon. Not a day had gone by since her coronation that she had not thought of this duty still left undone.

 _You had the man you wanted right in front of you,_ she reminded herself. _All you had to do was say the words. And still you did not._

She felt her handmaiden place the cold steel of her direwolf crown around her forehead and found herself back in the present day. No sense in dwelling on what was past. The day had come when her people would travel from their villages and their own castles to Winterfell, to present their petitions to their Queen in the North. She had to be aware and present in the current moment for her people.

The sun was setting over the light summer snowfall outside the window beside Sansa as the last petitioners, a woman and a younger boy, approached her high table where she sat with her Hand Lord Royce. There was something about the young woman with her fiery red hair, so similar to her own, that was familiar. The boy stood in her shadow, a brother, Sansa presumed. He must have been a boy of fifteen or sixteen, the girl beside him a woman grown, near her own age. She could not make out any distinct features of the boy’s face as the shadows grew longer, but she caught a glimpse of his light brown hair and a glint in a blue eye.

“Your Grace,” the woman with the red hair began. Sansa wondered if she imagined the bite in the woman’s voice. “My name is Alys Karstark.”

Sansa swallowed. The last time she had seen Alys Karstark had been at the Battle of Winterfell, and before that when she had fought to strip the girl of her family’s ancestral castle because of her father’s treason. She suspected the boy cowering behind her was not her brother as she had thought, but instead Ned Umber, the young boy Sansa had also sought to strip of his inheritance.

“I see that you remember me,” the lady Alys continued.

“I do, Lady Karstark.”

“I remember your Hand, too,” Alys continued, and at this the boy withdrew from the older woman’s shadow and came to stand at her side. Sansa could see the beginnings of a beard on his chin, the hairs wispy and thin, and saw the hilt of a sword at his side. “Lord Royce, is it? I seem to recall you agreed with our queen when she fought to strip myself and Lord Umber of our family’s ancestral homes for crimes we did not commit.”

Lord Royce cleared his throat. “That was many years ago, my lady, my lord. I do not know that either I nor Queen Sansa would make that decision now.”

Sansa stiffened in her seat. She agreed with Lord Royce, but he spoke out of turn. This was becoming a habit of his: speaking for her when she could just as well speak for herself.

Alys smirked. “You’re not from the North, are you, Lord Royce?”

Sansa glanced at her Hand, and watched as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “No, Lady Karstark. I come from the Vale.”

“I thought so.”

“Why have you come before me today?” Sansa interjected, disliking the tension in the room. She hoped to get this woman and the boy at her side out of her castle as soon as she could. “What petition would you have me consider?”

“Only this,” the boy said, stepping forward, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. She could feel the two members of her Queensguard tense behind her, their hands moving to their own weapons, though she did not think the boy planned to harm her. “That you give Houses Umber and Karstark freedom.”

Sansa froze. “Freedom?”

“Freedom from the yoke of the Starks,” Alys said. “Freedom to rule ourselves.”

“What you are speaking of is treason,” Sansa responded fiercely, but she could feel cold fingers of fear slipping down the back of her gown like rivulets of melting snow.

“If it is treason,” the boy said, and suddenly Sansa realized, however young he may have looked, it was a man who stood in front of her, hardened with anger and bitterness, “then so be it.” 

 


	2. Chapter 2

With the petitioners gone and the castle once again deathly silent, Sansa dismissed her incompetent Hand and lit a lantern. She stole through the halls of her own castle like a thief in the night, her lantern casting shadows that bounced about her like ghosts. Fitting, she thought, for where she was going.

As soon as she set her slippered foot on the cobblestone floor of the crypt, she could feel a chill run throughout her entire body, a chill that had nothing to do with the change in temperature. Despite being a Stark, the last Stark in Winterfell – _perhaps the last Stark ever to exist if you never marry and the North rebels against you_ , her brain insisted, though she pushed the thoughts away – she had always felt uncomfortable in the crypts.

Shaking off the chill, she wound her way past the silent statues keeping watch over the darkened halls beneath the castle until she began to recognize the faces elegantly carved in the stone, if not from her own memory, then from stories. She recognized her grandparents, Lord Rickard and Lady Lyarra, her uncle Brandon Stark, her aunt Lyanna Stark, her brother Jon Snow’s mother. Finally she stood in front of the likenesses of her own parents and her older brother Robb, their faces so familiar it twisted her heart. It had been many years since they had died and she had last seen them alive, but it never seemed to hurt any less to see their faces carved in stone, as if they had never been truly alive.

She gently set her lantern on the ground beside her feet and took into her hands the half-melted candle the statue of her father held in his outstretched hand. Popping open the door of the lantern, she gingerly lit the candle and placed it back in the statue’s hand, repeating this action with the statues of her mother and elder brother.

Even after all these years as Queen in the North, she still struggled to call on the old gods, the gods of her father. She had always been far more familiar with the seven gods and goddesses of her mother; as a girl, the services in Winterfell’s sept and later the Sept of Baelor had fascinated her, with the fine robes the faithful wore and the rainbows cast by their crystals making a spectacular show for a young girl to watch. In comparison, her father’s gods had always seemed cold, distant; as silent as the weirwood that stood in the center of Winterfell’s godswood. Nevertheless, Sansa called on them now.

“Old gods,” she began, her voice trembling. She cleared her throat and began again, closing her eyes. “Gods of my father, and his father before him,” she said. “Give me guidance and wisdom in this matter. Show me the way to peace in the North.”

Sansa’s eyes snapped open as she suddenly knew what to do. She scooped up her lantern and escaped the dank halls of the crypts for the silent and cold godswood. It wasn’t long before she stood in a snowdrift in front of the weirwood tree, its dark red eyes seemingly watching her. She knelt beside the hot spring, and stared into the eyes of the weirwood, though they still unnerved her now as much as they had when she was a child. “Bran,” she said to the weirwood.

A breeze passed through the still godswood, lifting the ends of Sansa’s hair and sending them dancing around her face. _Sansa_ , the wind seemed to whisper in her ear. She shivered.

“Bran,” she continued. “I am leaving for King’s Landing on the morrow. Have the castle ready to receive me and my men.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! There will be Sansa/Tyrion interactions coming soon, I promise.


	3. Chapter 3

Tyrion Lannister sighed and rested his head in his hand as he watched his king’s eyes roll back in his head for the third time that day. _I don’t understand why Bran keeps up the farce of attending these meetings if he’s going to be a world away for half of them_ , he thought bitterly to himself. So far during this small council meeting alone, Bran had traveled to Asshai-By-The-Shadow, where the last of Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons had found refuge among the magic and unhatched dragon eggs, and to Naath, where a number of the Unsullied – Grey Worm among them – had managed to survive the poisonous butterflies that protected the island and carved out lives for themselves among the natives. They had been in this meeting for over an hour, and they had not managed to discuss anything that was relevant to Westeros with their king. Now, the small council sat in uncomfortable silence as Bran slipped away to some faraway place none of them would ever see while they all had more pressing matters at home to present to the king. Tyrion could feel their eyes on him, and he knew they blamed him for getting trapped with this king who was little more than a figurehead, though the half of them who had been present that day had also chosen Bran Stark as their king.

_But it was your idea, Imp,_ he chided himself as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the head of the table. _They trusted you, and you failed them. You no more deserve the title of Hand of the King now than you did when you bore it for Joffrey and Daenerys._ He thought he   
could almost feel the pin on his tunic piercing the skin beneath it, and the heart beneath that. _If you still have one_ , a voice that sounded like his father’s whispered. Tywin Lannister had been dead for ten years, but he still cast a long shadow over his son.

Next to him, Bronn clearing his throat drew Tyrion out of his reverie. “Does anyone want to hear a joke?”

The entire table groaned. “I don’t think now is the best time, Bronn,” Tyrion responded for everyone.

“That’s Lord Bronn, if you please,” Bronn said, to which Tyrion rolled his eyes. “Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely disrespected by our Hand of the King here, I’m getting married.” Bronn puffed his chest out, looking not unlike one of the ridiculous colorful birds of the Summer Isles.

“Was that supposed to be your joke?” Samwell Tarly asked, a quizzical look on his face.

“You’re getting married?” Tyrion interrupted. “You?” In spite of himself, Tyrion let out a laugh. “Ser Bronn of the Blackwater, who visits more brothels in a month than even I have in my entire life?”

Bronn deflated a little, now on the defensive. “As a matter of fact, I am. Some Tyrell cousin. Alla, her name is. Served Margaery when she was queen. Got the hell out of King’s Landing and back to her father’s tiny castle before your sister murdered the rest of her house.”

“So it’s a political match?” Podrick Payne asked.

“You could say that,” Bronn said, relaxing once more and propping his dirty boots up on the gleaming table, that mischievous look on his face that Tyrion knew too well. “But she also has the sweetest ass I’ve ever–“

“My sister is coming to King’s Landing.” Across the table, King Bran’s eyes were once more gazing at his small council, rather than whatever wonders he had traveled to.

It took a moment for Tyrion to realize what Bran had said, and he suddenly felt as if he were outside of his own body, watching himself with someone else’s eyes. Though he found himself thinking about his wife almost every day, he had not seen her in nearly five years. For a moment, he thought he could see her as if she were standing in front of him once more, her red hair gleaming in the sunlight streaming through the windows, her blue eyes half-hidden in shadow, always one step ahead of him. 

“Your sister?” Tyrion heard himself saying as if from a great distance. He wondered if the way he felt now was how Daenerys and Jon Snow used to feel when they rode their dragons through the skies.

“Queen Sansa is leaving Winterfell?” Brienne of Tarth asked, her eyes lighting up. She had been Queen Sansa’s sworn sword after Sansa had escaped Ramsay Bolton’s clutches, and she had always seemed so loyal to Sansa that Tyrion had always wondered what it was that had persuaded her to leave Sansa’s side for Bran’s.

“She is departing on the morrow with her men,” Bran said in the stiff, cold voice Tyrion had never quite gotten used to. “She will be here within a month’s time.”

Tyrion felt a hand clapping his back, and returned to himself. “Alright, Imp,” Bronn crowed. “I’m getting married, and you’re seeing your wife again. I guess our whoring days are behind us, eh?”

Tyrion could feel his heart pounding. Tyrion supposed he had a heart after all. 

 

 


End file.
